


Coda

by BedeliaAnneRavenscroft



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Body identification, Character Death, Death, F/M, Heavy Angst, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-TWOTL, Wedding Rings, in place of the stinger, set after the cliff scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:23:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8282477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BedeliaAnneRavenscroft/pseuds/BedeliaAnneRavenscroft
Summary: His danger was gone, the darkness of his veil lifted from before her eyes. But after so long in darkness, the light was blinding. She wanted it back, needed it even.





	

**Author's Note:**

> An alternate ending to The Wrath of the Lamb, set in place of the stinger scene. I apologize in advance for the angst.

“ _Doctor Du Maurier?”_

The man at her door was not a stranger, but he was neither of the men she had expected. Jack Crawford held her gaze, his face unreadable.

She did not invite him in, just nodded her head and asked the reason for his visit.

“ _I require your assistance...”_

A hollow roar began in her ears, like the sound of the ocean crashing against rocks during a storm. Fragments of sentences remained afloat in those tumultuous waters while others sank, lost in the darkest of depths.

“ _...apparent suicide...”_

“ _...cliff...”_

“ _...no known next-of-kin...”_

“ _...help identifying...”_

For a moment she was lost in those same waters, unable to form a coherent thought. She waited for the nausea to pass, swallowed hard against the imagined taste of saltwater rising in her throat.

It felt like drowning.

Crawford's apology, done out of professional requirement, held little in the way of warmth.

What else would be expected? He was likely glad.

She should be glad.

The realisation hit her then: she was safe. The seemingly unending dance they had begun so long ago was finally over, never to resume again.

Never again.

Time blurred. One moment she stood at her front door, her packed bags waiting in the hallway behind her; the next she sat in the passenger seat of Crawford's car, hands folded in her lap, staring out the window.

She saw nothing of the present, her mind pulling her back to the past: long nights spent together in Florence, limbs entwined beneath the sheets, both sated and, in a way, content.

Her stomach twisted. She swallowed salt water again.

They arrived at Quantico and went through the numerous screening procedures. She clipped a 'visitor' badge onto her jacket. Crawford lead her down the maze of corridors, their footsteps the only sounds exchanged between them, to the morgue.

They stopped before a window that gave way to horizontal white shutters.

_Observe or participate?_

To participate would be to pull the cord that opens the shutters.

She asked if she could: Crawford said yes.

A viper wrapped its way around her throat, constricting until she could barely breath.

She dug her nails into her palms, drawing blood as red and viscous as wine.

She pulled the cord.

He lay on a metal slab, covered up to his shoulders by a white sheet.

The viper disappeared. Air rushed into her lungs, leaving as soon as it had entered in a shuddering sigh.

Resolute, she did not cry; they would believe her a sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome.

As she looked upon his sallow face, white as the sheet covering him, she wondered, even now, if they were not to remain prisoners to each other – she his captor and he hers.

But neither had truly wished to cage the other.

She asked of his injuries, their severity.

Crawford told her the coroner's report, of the bullet that entered and exited his body; that, painful as it would have been, it likely would not have killed him.

He died when he hit the rocks beneath the water's surface.

Fractured skull, broken spine, multiple internal injuries.

She turned back to the window.

Bruises on his face and upper body stood out against the pallor of his skin: purple, black and blue marks that reminded her of the patterns on a moth's wings.

It would be impolite to look away, though this image of him will remain clear in her mind for the rest of her days.

She nods, her voice a whisper. “It's him.”

********

His danger was gone, the darkness of his veil lifted from before her eyes. But after so long in darkness, the light was blinding. She wanted it back, needed it even.

********

As she left Quantico, Crawford had handed her a small manilla envelope, no bigger than her cell phone. He said nothing as he held it out, nor when she took it, as though it did not happen.

Now she sits alone at the head of her dining table, holding the envelope in her hand, feeling its significant weight.

Without another moment's thought, she slides her nail beneath the sticky-tape seal, opens it, shakes its contents into her cupped hand.

She gasps softly as the cold metal falls into her palm.

His wedding band, suspended from a silver chain tarnished from the salt-water, though the band itself still gleams as bright as the day she placed it on his finger.

The tears come now, and she does not try to stop them.

She shakes the envelope once more and a small square of paper drops onto the ring and chain.

With a foreign tremor in her hands, she places the envelope on the table before her, lays the ring and chain atop it.

She unfolds the note, expecting familiar, copperplate writing.

But the note is not his.

Jack Crawford's messy scrawl is barely distinguishable, but she stares at the words until she deciphers them.

_He wore it that night, beneath his shirt._

 


End file.
